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Varanasi girl Shikha Shah creates pretty things from scrap

Born to a conservative, affluent Marwari family from Varanasi, Shikha Shah lived a pretty sheltered life till she moved to Delhi. She was there to earn a degree in environmental science, but the city was an education in more ways than one. “I saw people struggling to earn a livelihood and came across such abject poverty, pollution and environmental issues that it got me thinking.”

It may have been a shock to her small-town soul, but the scale of challenges she faced in Delhi also got Shah thinking. She was especially intrigued by the connection between people and the environment. She says, “I wasn’t sure how to go about making a change, so I worked for a few years in the CSR wing of the Reliance Foundation and got the opportunity to travel all over India and interact with a lot of rural communities. I returned to Varanasi in December 2015 with a germ of an idea that would create employment without hurting the environment.”

Coming from a line of successful entrepreneurs, Shah naturally gravitated towards the idea of starting something of her own. That something would be Scrapshala, which was born a month later. “I wanted the company to upcycle non-biodegradable material and create beautiful things with it, as well as employ the artisans in my city.” Uttar Pradesh, with its rich heritage in art and handicrafts, was brimming with talented artisans who had lost their jobs to mechanisation over the years.

Shah says, “Finding people who could create things for Scrapshala wasn’t very difficult, but making them stay was. I told the artisans that they would be doing exactly what they had been doing all these years; the only difference was that they would be working on scrap. They knew that they were creating something, but had no idea where it would be sold or who would buy it. So a lot of the artisans left after a few months. Working with scrap also meant that they had to clean it first and make it sterile, and that didn’t appeal to some. But gradually, thanks to media attention and interest from foreign tourists, things started looking up. Now we have eight artisans working full-time with us and many part-timers too.”

But building a startup like Scrapshala couldn’t have been all smooth sailing. Shah agrees, “The idea itself was pretty disorganised, and it still is a little bit. If you talk about brands like Fabindia, they have standard designs that they follow and they manufacture a certain number of those designs every month. But when you’re working with scrap, it’s hard to plan or standardise products. It was also difficult for me to convince my family of the idea. Finding an understanding landlord too was difficult.”

But Shah knew they were making measurable difference. Scrapshala elegantly upcycled lifestyle and home décor products are made from materials like plastic, rubber, wood and glass—material that would otherwise end up in garbage dumps, leaking toxins into the ground. Shah says, “We’ve kept thousands of kilos of scrap from going to landfills and entering water bodies.” Scrapshala’s products are designed by Shah and two fine arts students who are part of her team, and they retails on Flipkart and Snapdeal. The company also takes its products and skills on the road with exhibitions and CSR workshops.

Scrapshala’s success has been a happy surprise for this Benarasi businesswoman, who is already thinking of ways to scale up. “Right now, a huge chunk of my customer base is from my personal contacts, but I hope to change that very soon. We’re pitching to corporates because we think our products would make meaningful gifts.”

For now, Scrapshala is focusing on creating one livelihood every month. Shah affirms, “We’re trying to employ one full-time artisan every month, at a salary of at least Rs 15,000. A lot of tourists and even locals like to come and sit with the artisans to see how the products are being made, so we’ve finally moved to a bigger space in Varanasi. We’ve also started getting calls and messages from women from all over the country, especially homemakers who want to learn how to make our products.” The way ahead for this scrappy young company maybe a long and winding one, but if anyone is worthy of a rags-to-riches story, they are.